Nice to know you liked Robert Zelany's work, R_B_Bergstrom. He's awesome and I need to read those books again. Also, I thought Twin Peaks was a TV show? I never saw 3:10 to Yuma, but I think my mom did. I do agree with Darth Vader. Interesting point about Q, I never thought about that.
Twin Peaks was awesome but I felt it kind of went off the rails in the second season. The first season dealt primarily with the question 'who killed Laura Palmer'. But there was a whole lot more to the show than that, displaying a truly bizarre town filled with a quirky cast of characters, and an even quirkier FBI agent who makes Fox Mulder seem rational by comparison. Which reminds me -- while I think that most of the later seasons of "The X-Files" were crap, and the show itself seemed to be made up on the fly without any overall plan, I still think that "Cancer Man" and Kryczek were pretty cool villains. Also, Sylar in the first season of Heroes was pretty cool as a villain (lets not even talk about the later seasons).
Yep, Twin Peaks was a TV show, and there was also a movie (Full title Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me). I guess my comparing TV show characters to a comic book / movie character was a tiny bit confusing in retrospect. And since I'm replying anyway, here's a minor correction for you: It's Roger Zelazny. The first season and a half of Twin Peaks were amazing. Then the network suits forced the creative team to solve the murder mystery. The result was, once the bad guy was in custody, a multi-episode slump. The last few episodes get amazing again, but by then it was already cancelled. Cancer Man was pretty awesome, and I really liked the episode about his back story. Kryczek never did much for me, though.
Iago, from Shakespeare's Othello. One of the original greats, an archetype for many later villains in media and literature, but few pull it off half so well. He hates. We know not why. He's a charismatic genius, who is trying to kill basically all of the main characters in the play by manipulating them into killing each other. If you aren't careful, you'll find yourself rooting for the guy. We all have a bit of evil in us I think, and Iago embodies it amazingly well.
In regard to the Star Trek discussion that was going on a while back, when you think about it Q is ultimately a rehash of The Squire of Gothos minus the twist ending.
That's the one with Trelane? Right? Yeah. Q was based on Trelane. That's why in that Star Trek novel where Q and Trelane met, it ended with Q becoming Trelanes Godfather so to speak. Trelane was basically a kid.
I always felt that threads like these were only good for figuring out each other's taste in games/tv/books.
Goodwin's law should be adapted for Star Trek. Also, Aornis Hades in the Thursday Next Series. More fucking with minds than anywhere else
I've just thought of one (well, more than one, actually) -- Number 2 from "The Prisoner" -- specifically. because he's such a great actor, Leo McKern. He also has one of the best evil laughs for all of the Number 2s:
